Toyota (TM) Increases Car Production Plans For 2010, Another Sign Industry Has Bottomed

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 30, 10:52AM EDT · Published Dec 27, 2:26PM EST

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The last two years were probably the worst in the history of the global car industry which goes back over a century. The markets in the US, Japan, EU, and UK were all eroded by lack of consumer credit and high unemployment. Chrysler and GM went bankrupt. Layoffs throughout the sector went into the hundreds of thousands. Brands, including Pontiac and Saturn, were closed.

The only notable bright spot for the period was China, where car sales nearly doubled year-over-previous year in 2009.

It should bring some relief to the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers that Toyota (NYSE:TM) will increase it production to 7.5 million cars and light trucks in 2010. Reuters reports the figure is about one million units below 2007. It is, however, a significant improvement over 2008 and 2009.

Car sales in the US, Japan, and Europe may never return to the highs that they hit five years ago, but the industry’s radical downsizing is over.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.